


Your Soul Has Crushed Mountains

by evergreen_on_the_horizon



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (why is badass ty lee not a tag? who is out here underappreciating my girl?!), Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Badass Azula (Avatar), Badass Katara (Avatar), Badass Mai (Avatar), Badass Suki (Avatar), Badass Toph Beifong, Badass Ty Lee, Developing Friendships, F/M, Female Friendship, Feminist Themes, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-War, any listed romantic relationships are purely background, because let's face it, bryke failed them, this is basically just me trying to give the ladies of atla better lives post-comet, to the extent that i can commit myself to not shipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29797755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evergreen_on_the_horizon/pseuds/evergreen_on_the_horizon
Summary: “It never turns out to be what people make it out to be does it?” she says. “Life, I mean. Five years ago we were all just trying to make it to the next day in one piece and now…”“Now we don’t know what to do with the multitude of days that follow.”____Or: Five years post-war, six young women learn the advantages of being what and who they are.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Your Soul Has Crushed Mountains

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write fight scenes (well) and I've never written anything remotely related to action and adventure. But here I am, writing this story. Because we can all agree that the ladies of ATLA were done dirty by Bryke...right?
> 
> Let's remedy that.
> 
> (And if you want to fight me on that, this isn't the story for you. Please enjoy yourself with other stories in the archive. ☺️)
> 
> (Title from one of Rupi Kaur's lovely poems.)
> 
> Find the official YSHCM playlist [HERE](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Ej5WZk7rujah4xe2rd2Vs?si=HN7REOoKSruQQlWrJzH3zw).
> 
> [Katara](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5XYTozCUPXEr8HnP4BRWTV?si=MbNmcK6JT5WppGr1Q65RBw), [Suki](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1S0TmQ4BoKzjgokjMrTGwa?si=ZFmA0uMtTHCNTL_IzOS9pA), [Azula](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1R2grc2rxzndru6FbvgJGQ?si=ylvqaWr3QRq2JPVRek0Yiw), [Toph](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0a4qaTaxfied1YSmDeRseV?si=3xbRVgohTFqBXhpX_pnq0A), [Mai](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5HYgyNYsESXLaoGogRpoM2?si=vRbq1wV6Ss-vEChCML4-Nw), and [Ty Lee](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4qg7XofXuhLXDe5vOzAoIB?si=EWASlilxTUKQp9Ef9EJAmw) also each have their own individual playlists that you can check out!

The steel practice fans are heavier than she expected they would be, but she handles them with more finesse now than she did when Suki first gave them to her a month ago, her grip sure, her wrist movements precise. A burden at first, she now operates them as an extension of herself. Suki nods in approval when her hand darts out, fan closed, to disarm Ayako. Her aim is true, landing a debilitating blow to the other young woman’s shoulder.

“Nice, Katara! Way to put Ty Lee’s chi-blocking lessons to use!”

Hand-to-hand combat had been tricky, nearly a year passing before Suki deemed Katara good enough to move forward in the training regimen. Months of getting thrown to the mat had riled her up, a typhoon of blood raging in her veins until Ty Lee had pointed out that she wasn’t relying _enough_ on her bending instincts. She had to be willing to break her root, but she also had to be willing to emulate her element. She needed to yield to the force and roll and flow with the power with which it graced her. After hearing Ty Lee’s advice, Katara had found that she was thrown to the mat less and less and her observational skills were sharper than ever before.

Ayako, one arm out of commission and dangling limply at her side, is not to be underestimated. Ambidexterity is just one of her skills. She switches the angle of her body and tosses her own fan aside. Katara watches and waits, patient, breathing deep to center herself, looking for the exact moment to strike. The training room is a blur of browns and greens in her narrowed line of sight. When Ayako’s hand strikes out, reaching, grasping for Katara’s shoulder, she allows it. As anticipated, it gives the other girl a heightened sense of confidence.

Katara is not to be underestimated either, however. As victory flashes in Ayako’s dark eyes, the waterbender kicks out, landing a blow to her opponent’s calf and knocking her off balance. Faster than lightning, she pivots, her fingers wrapping around Ayako’s wrist. There is a weight shift, a tipping point, and Katara rolls forward like a cresting wave, bringing Ayako over her shoulder. The other girl’s body slaps to the ground, the breath whooshing from her lungs.

“Excellent!” Suki calls. “Finish her off!”

Katara skips in to land one more blow to a pressure point in one of Ayako’s legs and then flips away on lithe dancer’s feet learned from a girl in pink—all of this before Suki even finishes speaking.

“Nice going, Water Tribe,” Ayako wheezes. “Best spar yet!”

Tossing a canteen of water the waterbender’s way, Suki says, “Your technique is near perfect, Katara. You’ll have your golden fans in no time.” She pushes off the wall she was leaning against as she observed the spar and walks over to help Ayako into a sitting position.

Katara, breathless, flashes both of her friends a grin, feeling the red paint on her lips splinter. “I can fix the flow of your chi if you want,” she offers.

Ayako, using her mobile hand to massage the shoulder Katara hit, shakes her head. Strands of sleek, dark hair, loosened during the spar, flutter around her round face where they aren’t slicked down with sweat. “That’s alright, Water Tribe,” she says. “We won’t have you around forever. I appreciate the offer, though.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

The locker room is empty. Katara sets about untying her armor, a southern tune whistling past her lips and cutting through the silence. She strips herself of the soft forest green kimono and folds it up with neat creases before tucking it into her assigned locker, armor packed away in the rattan basket down below. The headpiece is last, a smooth green band with golden tassels and affixed with a round gold piece. The Water Tribe logo winks and flashes in the light. In place of the uniform, Water Tribe blue leggings are tugged up over hips and an ivory tee is pulled down over a taut stomach.

In the washroom, Katara turns on the tap and lathers a bar of seaweed soap up in chilly water. The bubbles are soft and foamy between her fingers and the volcanic ash is refreshing and gritty as it works away the face paint and sweat.

“Usual Friday night routine?” Suki’s voice asks.

Katara nods, working the soap into the seams where her nostrils meet her face.

“Cool. It’s Ty Lee’s night to cook.”

“I’ll be home in time to help,” Katara says. The sentence earns her a mouthful of soap. As many wonders as it works with face paint, the stuff tastes vile and she gags, spitting into the sink.

“I know you don’t need reminders or anything, but watch your back out there, yeah?”

Using a damp cloth to wipe her mouth clean of soap and paint first, Katara chuckles. “What do you think I’m doing, Suki? Dressing up like a spirit and blowing up factories?”

They exchange a wry look in the mirror over the sink.

“It’s the same thing every Friday. I run to the beach, I do some yoga, I run home. You don’t have to worry so much.”

“ _I’m_ not all that worried. It’s your brother.”

Katara rolls her eyes and wrings out the cloth. She turns to Suki, back against the sink, arms folded over her chest. “How many disciplines do I need to master before he stops?”

“All of them, I’m sure. Every single one.”

“I literally helped the Fire Lord fight an Agni Kai when I was hardly fifteen. We aren’t kids anymore. We’re adults in every nation! _Legally!_ ”

“Sokka loves you.”

“He loves you too. Does he try to airship parent you from a distance?”

“No, but it’s different.”

“I know,” Katara grumbles.

“And you know he has a point. There’s a lot of—”

“—crazies out there. The peace is tenuous. Yeah. I know.”

“Just look out for yourself,” Suki says gently. “You’re the only Katara we’ve all got and we’re fond of you.”

Katara sticks her tongue out at her friend. “You got it, _Sokka_.”

“Sokka says thank you!” Suki hollers as the waterbender steps out of the locker room and back into the dojo.

* * *

_“Katara?”_

The waterbender sighs as she watches the dot that is Appa fade into the endless midsummer sky. Exhaustion crawls deep within her bones, living in the marrow and acting as a weight that makes her limbs slow. They’d been travelling for so long after it all, reluctant, heart-wrenching understanding an invisible companion that prodded them awake and kept them from speaking more than necessary. She’d hardly slept more than a doze or two and her eyes feel gummy and dry now, sticky with the residue of tears and itching with sleep deprivation.

“ _You can stay,_ ” she’d told him. “ _You’ll never be unwelcome._ ”

“ _That’s okay. The Southern Air Temple is just a few hours away. Appa can manage, can’t you, boy?_ ”

He hadn’t looked at her once.

On the ground, she checks for her shadow, but it’s a fruitless endeavor at this time of year in the south. It could be one in the morning or one in the afternoon and there would be no way of knowing. Her pack rests next to one of Appa’s massive pawprints in the snow. Katara reaches for it with a smooth, dry hand, but pauses midway, eyes fixated on the appendage.

It was all so recent, so quick. She half-expected her fingers to still be damp and pruned from the laundry. Her thumb runs across the pads of her other fingers, finding them soft and pliant. The way they should be.

“ _Katara? Are you happy?_ ”

Her hand wraps around the strap of her pack and she hefts it over her shoulder, squinting against the bright rainbows of light the sun throws onto the snow. Perhaps she should be wiping tears from her eyes. She feels all dried up, though. Weightless. Empty. A leaf waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow her into the arms of the ocean.

Katara knows what she’s done to him. She’s acutely aware of the pain she’s inflicted. Months of it. She’d tried to hide the discontent, but he’d seen it. She wonders how much he tried to set right what was irreparably broken while she let it drag on and on. Had he noticed early on or was it a recent realization?

She hadn’t asked.

Maybe she should have.

The snow is heavy as she plods towards home. She knows that Sokka will have been waiting up for her, keeping a lookout for the bison. Given time, he’ll come barreling down the tundra, hands prepared to carry her physical burden.

For now, Katara trudges towards home, alone and hollow.

* * *

Over the past year, Katara has grown to love Kyoshi Island as her home away from home. The majority of its denizens are welcoming and kind, willing to lend a hand with a heavy load of groceries or cut a deal on mangoes. It is a community of people who look out for one another, something Katara knows well from her childhood in the South Pole. There are benefits to being associated with the Kyoshi Warriors on the island and in the world. The complimentary housing is nice, but the women pay for the little homes they share through acts of service, unwilling to take advantage of people’s good hearts. Katara helps out fishing trawlers when they run aground or dives down deep to disentangle their nets from errant blocks of coral. She cooks meals for elderly convalescents. 

Her time with the warriors has been a natural stepping stone on her journey to find herself. Before discerning her own path, she had been many different things for many different fragments of time. The Avatar’s girl; Chief Hakoda’s daughter; Master Katara, princess of the Southern Water Tribe; envoy to the Fire Nation. Here on Kyoshi Island, though, she has found freedom and near anonymity within the uniform and the paint. It has been a year of discoveries. She feels stronger for it, burnished and almost new.

Life, in Katara’s experience, has been lived in distinct phases. She looks back at them all like the chapters of a book. Before the Raid, After the Raid, The Boy in the Iceberg… Her story had unfolded in a flurry of plot points from there, often seeming to happen to her without her explicit consent. That had changed near the end of the war, though, when she and Zuko had plotted to steal a sky bison and kill a man. The choice had been there, wide open and offered without judgement. And it was that choice which had, in large part, spurred her into becoming more active in her post-war life.

A few missteps had occurred along the way, certainly. But if she’d learned anything from Ty Lee (other than critical self-defense skills), it was that errors could be learned from and didn’t define a woman's character.

The cool sands of the Kyoshi Island beach shift and sink beneath Katara’s feet as she plucks her shoes from where she discarded them, her muscles warm from sun salutations. Out on the horizon, the sun has begun to sink low, igniting a distant thrum in the waterbender’s blood as it yields the sky to the moon. It’s the precise burst of energy she needs for her run home.

Wartime had turned running into a life-or-death exercise. For a long time afterward, Katara had dealt with horrifying memories whenever she stepped outside for a walk through the South Pole or a jog through the botanical gardens in Caldera City. She’d been unable to take two steps without checking over her shoulder for Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, expecting them to come bearing down on her with fists of flame and shuriken whistling through the air. Just before her first run here on Kyoshi Island, Katara had stepped out the door of her house and into Zuko’s Agni Kai. The scent of smoke had permeated everything. Zuko had laid there, blue lightning crackling over and around his body.

Her anguished scream had roused all of the warriors in a nearby radius and prompted curious onlookers to their porches and windows.

Something darts through the pines at the edge of the beach, dark and not quite low enough to the ground to not raise suspicion. Katara’s breath hitches in her chest. The ocean at her back, she is a formidable opponent. The beach is otherwise empty, though, and she’s over a mile from any homes. It could take the warriors precious minutes to reach her. Depending on how many there are…

“No,” she mutters to herself. “Don’t think that way.”

A ribbon of water withdraws itself from the ocean, shimmering gold and red in the fading sunlight, snaking itself around the length of the waterbender’s arm. Katara allows herself a moment to watch the trees, eyes keen. When nothing moves through the shadows of the forest, she begins her slow procession to the stony path that leads back home. Ty Lee’s chi blocking lessons rotate throughout her memory.

“Use your opponent’s strength against them,” Suki’s voice whispers in her ear.

Katara moves on soft, quiet feet up the beach, her water at the ready. A bird flits through the canopy of the trees that line the left side of the path, unusual movement for this time of day. She pauses, eyes trained, ears listening for the slightest sound. The beat of her heart is louder than the waves crashing on the shore. Reaching deep, she finds her center and breathes into it until a tentative calm washes over her body and the blood pounding in her ears dulls.

A movement to the right of the road.

The waterbender spins, water slithering down her arm and into her fist before it lashes out into the trees. There is a yowling screech and a cat-owl takes off, shifting deeper into the forest.

Katara stands for several long minutes, body tense, arms at the ready, waiting for another movement in the trees. There is none and she barks out a nervous laugh.

“Stupid Suki freaking me out,” she says. “Just an animal. No reason to be on high alert.”

Still, as she runs home, feet flying sure over the rocky road, she keeps her saltwater ribbon wrapped around her arm, ready for an attack that never comes. When Suki greets her at the door of their shared house, she eyes the water with a raised eyebrow.

“You set me on edge earlier,” Katara explains, casting the water into a nearby rain barrel. “I water-whipped a poor cat-owl near the beach.”

The smile Suki gives her is soft and apologetic.

Ty Lee is in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and meat into haphazard shapes. She greets Katara with her usual exuberance before turning to stoke the fire beneath the pot. As she works, she alternates between humming a cheerful Earth Kingdom song and chattering endlessly on about the triplets she’d babysat earlier in the day. The painstakingly clear recipe Katara had written out for her is going largely ignored, buried beneath a pile of carrots diced into various sizes.

Suki and Katara step in to right Ty Lee’s errors, evening out the size of the meat and vegetables and making sure that her seasonings are appropriate. Being from the Water Tribes, Katara is used to salty foods and always keeps jerky and sea prunes on hand. Even for her palate, though, Ty Lee’s food had been _too much_. She and Suki had suffered through quite a few meals that were heavy-handed in terms of salt before they finally resolved to step in. Nights where Ty Lee was in charge of cooking dinner had gone much smoother ever since.

As the moon continues to rise, heavy and round in the velvety blanket of nighttime sky, the three stay up even as the hour grows later and later. Nights when the full moon reigns make sleeping a nigh unattainable achievement and Katara is thankful for Suki and Ty Lee. They never hesitate to keep her company when she’s restless, even if it means they’re all groggy and yawning during physical training the next morning. As the hours slip past, they play card games and pai sho until Ty Lee is nodding off, chin propped in her hand and shoulders drooping.

In an unspoken agreement, they set about their nightly routine. Ty Lee snuffs out the candles in the living room while Suki checks the front porch before locking the front door and Katara checks the back. She lingers in the doorway for a long moment, eyes scanning the dense copse of evergreens just off the back porch.

“Do you see something?” Suki asks, voice thick with fatigue.

“No.” Katara shakes her head. The spines of needles, the shadows of trunks, nothing more. “I think I’m still just a little startled from my run home.” She closes the door and slides the deadbolt shut with a gentle _snick_.

In darkness, she, Ty Lee, and Suki pad off to their rooms on light feet mumbling fond _goodnights_ as they go. Though Ty Lee’s snoring drifts through the walls scant minutes later, Katara continues to linger in the liminal space of midnight, waiting for the moon to crest in the sky.

* * *

Home has changed.

Katara has changed, too.

She feels as though those evolutions were in opposite directions.

Instead of going to sleep sandwiched between Gran Gran and Sokka at night, she finds herself tucked away in a corner bedroom of the grand residence built for her father. Her family moves about the space as thought it’s always been there. They’ve grown used to it, she supposes.

She has not.

She roams from room to room on sleepless nights, astounded and exasperated by the sheer amount of _space_. What does her father do with a living room? Why is there a study here when he spends all day at the meeting house, closed away in another one there? Sokka has an entire room dedicated to inventing things. This is space for the lords and ladies of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation, she thinks. It has no place in the Southern Water Tribe.

Pakku asks her to oversee the waterbenders as they set about raising a city from the ice and snow. They are almost all men, most of them decades older than she, and do not take well to the authority and autonomy she holds on their job sites. The younger ones are worse about it. Or at least more open about their dislike for her. They jeer at her and flout her directions with blatant disobedience.

“ _Look out, guys! The princess has got her sarashi in a twist again!_ ”

Katara wants to spit on the title and hand the men’s asses to them in a spar. She’ll take them all down one at a time and hardly break a sweat.

“It will get better,” Kirima says. She is the only female waterbender from the north who has chosen to break ranks with the healers upon immigrating here. Her nose is a button, her mouth a thin, crooked line. Her hair is a cascading fall of twists and braids dotted with painted beads made of bone. They make hollow clacking sounds when they collide, seeming to echo the empty, searching beat of Katara’s heart.

But things do not get better.

Sokka is set to lead a hunting expedition one weekend. Kirima elects to join the men on their journey, the only woman in the tribe to do so. The crowd falls silent when she steps forward to volunteer. Nobody says anything outright, but Katara sees a shiver of tension ripple across the men her friend stands before, chin held high and proud.

Sokka smiles bright and notes her name on his piece of paper. He fails to see what is right in front of him.

When her brother doesn’t return home that night, Katara sets out in search of him. Hakoda tells her not to worry. Pakku says that Sokka is likely out with friends. But Gran Gran twitches the curtains back from the window, her eyes hard as stones, her jaw tight. Katara and Kanna know Sokka. It’s a Thursday night and he’ll be expecting a letter from Suki with bated breath and tapping toes.

The Southern Water Tribe is growing, shedding its roots. The stirrings of a grand, sprawling city jut up out of the snow. Every street is void of people due to the hour and cluttered with building materials. Katara searches down every single eerily white avenue until she finally finds Sokka propped against a half-erected wall, his face bruised and bloody.

“Think I have some broken ribs,” he wheezes at her. His lower lip is split, dried blood crusting his chin. A quick assessment tells her that his right ankle is fractured. There’s no way he’s even hobbling out of here.

Katara bends a stretcher out of ice and ties a stray rope to it. She hauls her brother home, fury sparkling in her eyes.

At home, Hakoda and Pakku carry Sokka to his room where a hawk squawks impatiently on a perch next to the hearth. A green ribbon peeks out of the canister on its back. The warrior insists on having Suki’s letter to read while his sister heals as many of his injuries as she can. Katara works in silence, wildfire continuing to build and build and _build_ in her blood.

Her father and Pakku are speaking softly in the study when she finally retires to bed. Their words are indiscernible, but they pause and turn when they sense the waterbender’s presence in the doorway. They look at her with wary, apologetic eyes.

Katara frowns and closes the door, walking away before she spits acid and vitriol at them.

She stays awake all night, restless and angry.

 _How do you control it?_ she pens in a letter to Zuko. _How did you learn to live with the rage and not allow it to overtake you?_

When first light dawns, she is there, standing on the outskirts of the city while the band of men sets out on Sokka’s hunt, raucous and jovial as though they did not leave her brother for dead in an alley mere hours before. The sky is dark, the night of a new moon slowly giving way to the sun. Katara doesn’t need Yue, though, to sense the coppery rivers that flow beneath the hunters’ skin. Their footprints are navy shadows in the blanket of night-draped snow and…

It calls out to her. Her fingers itch with the _urge_.

_Blood._

It sings to her. It tempts her.

Katara stands there for as long as she can, hands clenched until her nails cut into her palms, body buzzing, fury incarnate. The final man is disappearing over the hill when she turns and sprints away, clinging to the last tattered shred of her self-control.

* * *

Katara wakes, shockingly alert, hairs raising on the back of her neck, to the faint scent of smoke. Moonlight falls in a ghostly sheet through her window and throws a wavering shadow into sharp relief on her floor. A discreet hand slides under her pillow, fingers making contact with her waterskin and steel fans. The metal is cold against her fingertips, but all the more comforting as the shadow unfolds itself, revealing the distinctive shape of a human.

Then, the shadow’s head turns and the shape clarifies. Katara’s mouth goes dry.

_Horns._

_A spirit?_

The shadow turns away and Katara hears the slow, grinding slide of her window as it closes. Silent, she rolls out of bed and onto the floor, taking her fans with her. Logic screams in the back of her head that a spirit wouldn’t need to utilize the window if it wanted access to her room. Through the space between the bed and the floor, she watches _it_ take several solid, audible steps closer.

It hesitates.

Katara launches herself through the air, handspringing herself over her mattress, feet jutting out to make contact with its head. As she flips, she sees the face, a blur of blue and white, a ghastly gaping maw of a mouth. While she is quick, _it_ is quicker, dropping low to the floor. She lands, heavy, on the wooden floorboards.

Heart a boulder in her throat. No time to hesitate. Katara pivots on the ball of her foot, arm sweeping out. Her fan is open and sharp, slicing through the air as she aims to make contact with the shadow’s Achilles tendon. But the thing rolls under her bed, stirring up the smell of smoke as it goes. The brunette growls low in her throat. She crouches down and waits.

It will have to emerge at some point.

She counts the seconds.

_Ten… twelve… fourteen…_

The thing stares out at her from beneath the bed, black, soulless pits where eyes should be. It wears the dark of night like a cloak, the eerily Water Tribe colors of its face looming in stark contrast to the sleepy gray shades of the witching hour.

_Twenty-three…_

It rolls.

Katara lunges over her bed. She and the shadow collide. It is substantive, made of muscle and bones, and lets out a sharp, rasping cry when their bodies knock together and crash into the wall that divides her room from Ty Lee’s.

“Katara?” the acrobat’s voice is muffled.

The waterbender grapples with the shadow that has invaded her room. It is strong, tall, distinctly male in its musculature. Broad shoulders, long fingers. Underneath the smoke, Katara smells blood churning through his veins, ruddy and warm.

“ _Katara?!_ ” Suki and Ty Lee this time, their footsteps pounding down the hall.

“Katara,” a different voice now, familiar in the way its accent rolls over the syllables of her name from behind that eerie face.

She freezes, legs astride the shadow’s heaving stomach, eyes wide and hair wild. Its hands rest against the floor in surrender. Just beneath the fanged mouth and blue chin is a strip of pale skin denoting a strong, sharp jawline. One razor-sharp fan poised at the shadow’s throat, Katara reaches out with the shaking fingers of her free hand and pushes on the demonic face which has been knocked askew in the scuffle. It slips upward.

A mask.

The door to her room slams inward. Suki and Ty Lee tumble into the room, fans at the ready.

And Katara stares down into golden, leonine eyes, mouth agape with righteous fury.

“ _Zuko?_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated, as always! Especially when venturing out of one's comfort zones. ☺️ xx


End file.
